The Foster Children of Time

Chapter Eight: In the Court of the Lupine King

Chapter Eight

 The Fort of the Three Hills had been built by a man of high birth among his people, known as “The Ravenous” for his prodigious appetite.  As a young man he had made his fortune in Galloway.  On the night of his wedding, the Ravenous One had experienced a vivid dream in which he beheld a distant, verdant land where three hills stood side by side.  Believing it an omen, he and his wife along with 319 loyal men and relatives set out, seeking the Vision Land.  When three pointed peaks were spotted in a fair-seeming pastoral new land, the Ravenous One was convinced that he had been divinely guided.  His people built the fort in the shadow of these peaks in the manner of their people, and set their wills to taming the surrounding countryside.  They fished and hunted, grazed their cattle, and harvested the bounty of the land.  At the onset of the first winter, the Ravenous One called for feasting and prayer to the Christian God.  

            In the second year, a secondary outpost was built near a narrow part of the small river where fishing was good.  By this time, increasingly hostile forays and ambushes by the strange men of that country had upset the settlers’ newfound contentment.  In the first month of the second winter, the Ravenous One was slain during a raid by the strangers.  Another small lookout post was built on a hill in the woods with an unobstructed view of the surrounding countryside. 

            The second winter proved to be harsh and the third nearly disastrous, with unforgiving snows and a deadly dearth of food.  Most of their cattle died, and the rest had to be slaughtered to feed the people of the Fort.  In a time of desperation, the wife of the Ravenous One, who at best paid lip-service to the Christian God, sought the advice of a Seeress skilled in the old wisdom of their folk.  They gathered at the Stone of Song near the willow pond, and the Seeress there made her pronouncements.  When asked if their descendents would still inhabit this land in years hence, the Seeress replied that it was so.  However, that night, the wife of the Ravenous One had a dream in which she saw a devouring wolf with monsters in his train descending on the land.

            The people, knowing nothing of this dream, were somewhat set at ease by the words of the Seeress, but their fortunes did not improve.  Food remained scarce and the strangers proved to be intractable.  The nephew of the Ravenous One, now risen to power and prominence, sowed discontent among the people and eventually convinced most of their folk to follow him back to the home country, against the wishes of the wife of the Ravenous one.  The remaining few held out for some months but ultimately perished or fled.  Returned to her home country, the wife of the Ravenous One soon allied herself with another man of influence, but he angered the king and fell from favor.  The wife, now called the Ill-Starred, was shunned and no one would heed her entreaties to return to the land of the three hills.  And so the Fort was abandoned for a time. 

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Gaudet bound the bands of Tony and Caroline with coarse rope while the horsemen held them at sword-point. 

“Let me go, you Cajun hippie freak!” Caroline protested and then unleashed a torrent of profanity that surprised even Tony.  Gaudet just chuckled.

            “Now, march,” ordered one of the horsemen.  Caroline and Tony were prodded onto the rutted path leading out of the clearing.  Before long, the elm, maple and brush growth thinned and they found themselves in a bucolic landscape, where cows and sheep grazed on sloping green fields in the distance.  A small river wound away to their left, widening until it lazily drained into marshlands.  The path before them eventually narrowed into a thin, sandy land bridge.  They continued onto a forested peninsula, headed towards three imposing rocky hills thrust up side by side.  In the shadow of these triplet hills lay an austere rectangular wood and stone structure with extensive fortifications sprawled around it.